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Anaxagoras was therefore right, according to all that we know. That
lie conceived the sun as consisting of iron depended without doubt upon
his being led by some circumstance to the important conclusion that
iron plays the chief role in inorganic nature. This was a stroke of
genius and hardly an accident. In like manner would a superficially
judging scientist shrug his shoulders on hearing the naive view that the
stars are glowing because they rub against the ether. We know indeed
that this does not at all agree with the view of our times. But I
maintain nevertheless that under this formally incorrect view is hidden one
of the greatest thoughts ever expressed. Scarcely one hundred years ago
most astronomers, and among them the leaders, as Herschel and Laplace,
had no idea that the sun required any storehouse from which it might
draw the enormous quantities of heat which it pours forth, partly in the
form of liglit. They did not reflect concerning this question. On the
otlier hånd Kant as a philosopher did this, and also Buffon and many
others before him, but among all known philosophers Anaxagoras was
pro-bably the first to do so. He could not suppose that the stars ouglit not
to have become extinct long ago on account of loss of heat, had not
heat in some way been sustained. The mechanical part of the above
mentioned conception of Anaxagoras is untenable, but the idea is
nevertheless grand.
Now it is very striking that all those wlio before Laplace made
con-tributions to the development of the cosmological ideas were natural
pliilo-sophers, possibly with the exception of Buffon and Descartes who were
also scientists of note. But it is no doubt most correct to consider their
cosmological works as being for the most part natural philosophy. The same
is also true of Swedenborg’s work in that he labored but little in working
out in phvsics his widely comprehensive and most remarkable ideas.
A question still remains to be explained, and that is to what extent
Swedenborg’s ideas have formed the basis of the works of his successors.
That one among them who agrees most closely with Swedenborg is Kant,
of wrhom it is well known that he had applied himself to Swedenborg s
works. Kant himself says in 1766 that Swedenborg as if by inspiration
had discovered scientific relationships which Kant had only been able to
explain after mauy and lengthy investigations. It is for those who
com-pare Kant’s speculations concerning inhabited worlds in his above
mentioned work with Swedenborg’s accounts of his visions quite manifest that
Kant has borrowed his ideas from Swedenborg and clothed them in more
philosophical garments. It is therefore not improbable that he has also
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